1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mixing tube and to a method of manufacturing the mixing tube. In particular, the present invention relates to a technique which can be suitably employed for a mixing tube used for mixing two types of fluids during production of a two-component reactive adhesive such as an epoxy adhesive, a polyurethane adhesive, or a silicon adhesive, or a sealant or a packing material.
2. Description of the Related Art
A two-component adhesive consists of base and catalyst agents which are prepared separately, and the base and catalyst agents are mixed together in use. Conventionally, the base and catalyst agents are mixed by employing a manual method using a knife, a spatula, or the like, a method that utilizes a dispenser using a static mixer, or a method that uses a specially designed mixer.
However, the following problems exist when performing mixing of materials by using the conventional methods. Hardening of the base agent and the catalyst agent in a two-component adhesive begins upon mixing of the base agent with the catalyst agent, and curing occurs even at room temperature. Therefore, there are occasions where the materials adhere to the knife, the spatula, inner portions of the static mixer, and containers within the specially designed mixer after one time usage. Therefore, the whole mixture cannot be used for its original purpose as an adhesive, resulting in disposal of the cured material.
Further, the degree of mixing performed by an operator depends on the judgement of the operator, and there is a problem in that differences develop in the quality of the resultant mixtures.
In view of the above-mentioned problems, the applicant of the present invention has already invented a mixing tube for mixing multi-component materials. This mixing tube manufactured from a flexible material, such as, a plastic film or the like, wherein a residual material, after mixing tube materials, remained inside the mixing tube can be squeezed out by squeezed the mixing tube. In this prior invention, plural containers that separately receive multi-component materials are provided to the mixing tube, and the multi-component materials are discharged from the plural containers. The features of the mixing tube are as follows. The mixing tube has an inlet port for mounting there to the containers that receive multi-component materials, a mixing passage for mixing multi-component materials that are injected from the inlet port, and an outlet port discharging the multi-component materials which have been mixed in the mixing passage. By continuously squeezing the mixing passage from the inlet port toward the outlet port of the mixing passage, the multi-component materials injected from the inlet port pass through the mixing passage to be mixed, and then are discharged from the outlet port (refer to JP 2003-001078 A).
The mixing passage of the mixing tube may be configured, for example, by connecting plural passage blocks in series, the passage blocks having the same number of deformed passages as the number of the materials to be mixed, and by suitably connecting the outlet port and the inlet port of each of the deformed passages at the connection portions of the passage blocks in order to repeat the operation of dividing the materials to be mixed that are discharged from a prior stage passage block at the inlet port to a subsequent stage passage block, and aggregating materials to be mixed at the outlet port. If the number of passage block connections is taken as N, the materials to be mixed are divided 2N times, and thus allowing sufficient mixing.
However, the configuration of the conventional mixing tube, with which the materials to be mixed are theoretically mixed 2N times, is complex. The configuration is difficult to reproduce, and difficult to manufacture. This type of mixing tube is therefore expensive and not suited to mass production.